Our weak

No, that's not a spelling error in the title. It's rather how I have felt all week long. I've had many health issues to deal with this week, leaving me very weak today. I have had severe tooth aches, so bad that I got only 4-5 hours of sleep in a 48 hour period on Monday and Tuesday, I caught Anna's cold/virus/weird baby thing and that makes me tired, my wrist has been acting up again, and there's probably something else that I missed. Blah....

However, God has been so good to us in spite of my weakness. Or maybe through it. I have had a much sweeter attitude toward the kids, my own as well as my three-year-old Tiny Trackers. I have been too weak to combat some issues with the kids and found alternative ways to have fun with them. We changed our whole school approach and it's working. Ben has been a sweeter child as well. So while my body is very tired, the rest of me is doing just fine.

I mentioned we've changed schooltime, and it's been for the better. I have always had the intent of unschooling the children but thought it best to use a more ecclectic approach for a few years. That has been thrown out the window. I'm unschooling now. We do have a time we call "schooltime" and we learn a Bible verse (the TT verse for the week), we read books, we talk about the "subjects" of the week from the book I'm following, and we do a craft or activity. Matthew then works on his reading lessons. But I also catch teachable moments (thank you, Mr. Heaton) throughout the day and they learn more that way. For example, Matthew found a quarter yesterday which led to a discussion about George Washington and Mount Vernon. We looked at my guidebook from my visit there for a bit and now he has a brief understanding of GW. That's the stuff we do all day long. You might think, "Hey, I do/have done that same stuff with my kids!" Then you have unschooled them. For us, it's more about catching the teachable moments and keeping their curiousity alive until they are able to do things on their own. I plan to get some more educational games and math manipulatives around here, but for now we are going to forgo any textbook-type material to teach them. For more info on the subject of unschooling, check out The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith. Unschooling just seems to fit our family so much better than other homeschooling methods.

Rob's birthday was on Tuesday and we had a nice, quiet day at home. I had a bit of money from renting out some of Rob's textbooks, so I treated him to a Hardee's breakfast. We had pizza for lunch and for supper we went to the grocery store and each picked out something fun to eat. Kind of weird, but easier to manage than taking him to a restaurant with three small children. We also got our new washer that day, so he had a toy to play with :) And, just to round out his exciting day, we filed our taxes. That may be the time when parents are most thankful for their children....

Otherwise, it's been a pretty quiet week. The Custom Shoppe, where Rob works, is cutting down to 32 hour weeks now from 36 (from 40....). At least he's still employed, but I told him he works for a communist company. You know, spread the wealth out enough so that every gets something, but it's still not enough. He found that pretty amusing.